Context Menu and the forbidden word

Well, I have been out of my development table and in another city so I had unsubscribed myself out of all mailing list but then I was tempted to go to the flashcoders list at http://chattyfig.figleaf.com and saw all the talks about the new public beta flash player 7,0,0,249 and saw many things, including a good listing of the features. Besides many others, Context Menu is one good addition that Flash 7 has bestowed us.

But as I was trying out this new Context Menu, I stumbled upon a funny (or may be there is a reason) fact that you cannot used the word “Macromedia” or any of other words preceding or succeeding it in your context menu. Hmmmm, there may be other keywords but I am not sure at this very early stage, it is too early to say anything. The maximum character for the context menu item also seem to be 58 character limit. And if you use Stage.showMenu = false;, then your custom context menu is also gone, so it should be either “true” or just leave it as it is “true” by default.

I am not sure if Macromedia is going to allow developers to totally override the context menu or not, most likely not. But I would love to get a total control of that menu, would definitely make us easily to deploy Rich Internet Applications much like a desktop app with all those nice context menu which the common users are so adapt to that they are lost without the same.

It might be possible but not sure again, I would love to be able to do a cascading/tree like context menu for more flexibility. According to me, most common computer users and specially windows user (there are many in fact), use the context menu a lot. If you give the mouse to a kid (and any new computer user), they will try to click whichever is clickable and when they click on that “About Macromedia Flash 7 …” then they are jettisoned out of your app.

I do not mind giving full credit of flash and linking to Macromedia but I feel at times, I really want them totally off or my own. This had been asked a million times in the wishlist, so I will not make a plea again and I won’t grudge against Macromedia for having that menu item lingering.